Trump vs. Intel Community

Jan 16, 2017

RUSH: Bob Woodward, as you know, is the dean from Woodward and Bernstein — Watergate. He’s still the go-to journalist on investigative journalism that destroys presidents. Woodward and Bernstein showed how it’s done. That act, Watergate, has inspired every journalist — practically everybody in journalism school — to show that they could do it, too: Take down powerful people. Well, this “dossier” last week that McCain was so eager for that he sent somebody on a jet across the Atlantic Ocean to the U.K. to pick up a copy of it and bring it back and give it to James Comey at the FBI?

This is the thing that Trump had hired prostitutes to urinate on a bed Obama and Michelle had slept in at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. We found out, by the way, that even Brennan at the CIA and James Clapper, who works for Obama, had both said there’s nothing to this. This is all bogus. We presented this to Trump as an example of the kind of stuff that’s out there that he needs to be aware of. Trump has said he wouldn’t accept. He didn’t want a daily briefing on intelligence. He doesn’t need to be told how to open a door every day, so why do I need the same intel every day? I’m a smart guy; I can figure it out.

They’re trying to tell him, “You do need a briefing from us every day,” and so this was an example. They wanted to say, “This is why you need to have us brief you, ’cause this is the kind of stuff that’s out there.” Well, McCain and the Democrats and the media tried to make this real! They tried to sell this as real, all this golden shower stuff like the prostitutes urinating on Obama’s bed, and it’s filled with our stuff that’s been floating around Washington for many, many months.

Almost a year, and nobody ran with it ’cause none of it’s ever been verified until BuzzFeed and CNN decided to unload on it because they’re all at their wits’ end on destroying Trump. So Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday brought in Bob Woodward and said this: “What do you think of the way the intelligence community handled that so-called Russian dossier? And overall, what do you think of the way they’ve handled Donald Trump?”

WOODWARD: I think what’s underreported here is Trump’s point of view on it. I’ve lived in this world for 45 years where you get things and people make allegations. That is a garbage document. It never should have been presented as part of an intelligence briefing. So Trump’s right to be upset about that. When people make mistakes, they should apologize.

RUSH: Oh, man, this was sobering. Oh-ho! You talk about taking the wind out of the sails of CNN and BuzzFeed and Andrea Mitchell and all the others? Here’s Bob Woodward, who they all want to be. They all want to be Bob Woodward. They all want to find out what it’s like to be Bob Woodward. They want to find out what it’s like to be considered the greatest star in the Washington Post. They want to know what it feels like to be able to actually destroy a president and force him from office!

And that guy, Bob Woodward, is telling them that what they were trafficking in was garbage and that it’s understandable Trump would be upset about this, and what’s being underreported is Trump’s point of view on it! You talk about a gut punch? This would be akin to Obama telling the media that I had a point all along. Well, later in the same show — Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace — he had the CIA director, John Brennan on there. He said, “Mr. Brennan, your response to President-elect Trump comparing what you did with this dossier to what was done in Nazi Germany?”

BRENNAN: It is unsubstantiated reporting that is out there, that has been circulating in the private sector and the media as well by a firm that pulled this information together. What I do find outrageous is, uh, equating intelligence community with Nazi Germany. I do take great umbrage at that. And there is no basis for Mr. Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for leaking information that was already available publicly.

RUSH: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Trump is right about this, folks, because the thing that differentiated it this time was the intelligence community was in on it. Now, this document’s been around for months and months and months, and none of it ever verified, which is why the media — despite their strongest desires to do so — never used it. But then the intelligence community came along and told everybody they had briefed Trump on it! And when the intelligence community said that, the news media thought, “Hey, here’s a new hook! Here’s a new angle.” It made it newsworthy.

So Brennan is wrong about this. (impression) “I take great umbrage and there’s no basis for Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for leaking…” Leak or not, by giving this thing weight, the media decided to run with it. Trump is exactly right on this, folks. Brennan, CIA? This is all the establishment. They’re all out to destroy Trump. Please do not underestimate that. They are still spitting mad. They can’t believe what has happened here, with Trump winning this election. They’re beside themselves, and that’s what this inspector general investigation of Comey and the FBI is all about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The IG, inspector general of the Department of Justice announced last week an investigation of the whole Clinton email problem, but it’s very select. It’s only of the FBI. There’s no investigation of Loretta Lynch meeting with Clinton on the plane. There’s no investigation of why there was no grand jury. No investigation of why there, therefore, weren’t any subpoenas. No investigation of why the Department of Justice really wasn’t interested. No, there’s only investigation of James Comey and the FBI.

And it’s a case study in why Republicans lose, how they react to things like this. Andy McCarthy at National Review: “It is so frustrating to observe news coverage of Thursday’s announcement” of this investigation. “The core of the investigation [is] Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal. As usual, the Left understands exactly what they are choreographing, beginning with Friday’s screaming New York Times page-one headline that ‘Comey’ is the subject of a new Justice Department probe.

“As always, the left is setting the parameters of the controversy and the terms by which it will be discussed. And as night follows day, Republicans are at sea, not knowing quite what is being investigated. Precisely because of the way Democrats have teed things up, Republicans have been hoodwinked into thinking that they must figure out where to come down on FBI director James Comey… In other words: The Democrats are more than halfway home. Republicans figure nothing important has really happened yet.

“The left knows it has already set the table. By the time the GOP grasps what’s happening, the public’s understanding of the controversy will be set in stone. … The charade now underway has nothing to do with determining whether Justice Department protocols were violated …” It has nothing to do with the Department of Justice. “That’s the pretext for convening something that can be called a ‘Justice Department investigation’ (which sounds like we’re looking to identify a culprit) by the inspector general (which sounds like the investigation must be non-partisan,” but it isn’t.

“[W]hat is going on here is a battle, which Democrats are hell-bent on winning, between two competing narratives. … Now that the election is lost, the Democrats see no downside in portraying the Clinton e-mails investigation as its dispositive event…” So what this investigation’s all about is furthering the narrative that the FBI and Comey cheated and put obstacles in the way of Hillary being nominated in conjunction with the Russians hacking the election, and the investigation is said to be targeting those areas. “The way they accomplish this is by sculpting the inspector-general investigation. …

“The aim is obvious: If Comey’s statements were against protocol, then they will be portrayed as violations that caused Clinton to lose — the argument will be that Trump’s victory was as razor thin as it gets, Clinton decisively won the popular vote, so surely Comey” and the FBI and the Russians are why Hillary lost, and they’re trying to engrave this as the narrative of the 2016 election. Meanwhile, the Republicans are saying, “Hey, you know, we need to get to the bottom of this, too!” They want to be seen as cooperative rather than pushing back and correctly identifying this for what it is: An effort to obscure what really happened, and that is that Hillary lost because she was a horrible candidate and the Democrats were rejected.